


the shadow burning at our feet

by patchy



Category: Persona 5, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Carl Jung would probably spit at my feet, Female Jung Hoseok | J-Hope, Female Park Jimin (BTS), Found Family, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, MOTS, Pining, Trans Female Character, but honestly the context of that is barely addressed in this drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22998199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchy/pseuds/patchy
Summary: 20XX, Seoul. Summer. Zenith.Namjoon's year is only halfway done and it's already beyond his wildest dreams. He's fallen into another dimension, fought his way back, made friends in a school that hates him, and, just maybe, taken the first steps to changing the world.But the stronger the light the darker the shadow, and no matter how far you go, it will follow.
Relationships: Kim Namjoon | RM/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Taehyung | V & Park Jimin
Comments: 23
Kudos: 29





	the shadow burning at our feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maddymoonchild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maddymoonchild/gifts).



> Big thanks to MaddyMoonchild and twt user @poppyseedfic for beta reading!
> 
> Fic title comes from BTS's Interlude:Shadow and Persona 5's Rivers in the Desert. I've been screaming about this crossover for eons now TT^TT.
> 
> Note that person names used in this are borrowed from K-Pop idols but beyond that everything is fictional! Including stuff I’ve made up about Korean law! You’ve been warned.

The air conditioner mounted above Leblanc’s doorway hums gently, breathing out a stream of cool air that drops down to the group of kids studying in the restaurant booth below.

The breeze rustles the pages of Jimin’s notebook, and she smoothes the paper down with one hand. Taehyung donates his eraser to weigh the corner down and Jimin flashes him a smile before going back to her note-taking, English letters nested between orderly rows of hangul. In her lap, Mon pants quietly, their front paw pawing at the air as Jimin administers belly rubs to the little dog.

Across the table, Jungkook is absentmindedly nibbling at his mechanical pencil as he pores over the textbook lying open on the table between him and Hosook. Beside him, Hosook quietly reads aloud the passage, pausing to repeat when Jungkook points at specific words. 

Yoongi is in the corner of the booth listening to an audio lesson with headphones on. Leaning back with his eyes closed, arms folded, he seems to be concentrating hard.

It’s peaceful. With how focused they are, Namjoon wonders if anyone passing by the cafe would mistake them for model students.

In reality, they’re anything but. They’re secretly the “ _Phantom Thieves: regular students by day and secret superheroes by night! Fighting against the world’s injustices in an alternate plane of reality!_ ” as Jungkook likes to remind them. Namjoon hopes his fanboy phase will wear off now that he’s officially joined their ragtag group of misfits.

There’s Yoongi, unapologetically bleach blond, who’s rumoured to have been kicked off the basketball team due to misbehaviour. There’s Jimin, hair in pigtails and dressed primly, but who never fails to draw unwanted attention at school. Taehyung doesn’t attend the same school as them, but his electric blue hair and his could-be-vintage-could-be-grandfatherly clothing choice doesn’t exactly blend in.

Not to mention the kicker, which is Namjoon himself. He can hide behind shaggy bedhead and thick glasses frames all he wants, but can’t hide from the whole school knowing about his criminal record after the secret leaked the first week he transferred.

Though, now that Hosook and Jungkook have joined them, Namjoon wonders how the gossip will explain their addition into the group. The captain of the girls’ tennis team and the star of the track team, now part of the group of misfits? What gives? Namjoon certainly doesn’t know. He’s still not quite sure how they managed to pull off the last heist and end up with two new team members instead of getting reported to the police.

Just months before, Hosook had been searching the whole school for the elusive Phantom Thieves. Jungkook, one of the first fans who’d followed them online, had been eager to help his noona find his heroes. What he didn’t know was that Hosook was in an entangled net of blackmail and was prepared to trade their identities for her own freedom.

Then she made the mistake of trying to lure out the Phantom Thieves by tailing their next target, and all of them fell into Lee’s trap. He was a powerful mob boss with friends in high places; they were powerless teenagers with no leverage to speak of. There was no way to defeat him...no way in the real world, at least.

Over the next month they fought through the palace of cold steel and ill-gotten riches and emerged victorious, stealing Lee’s heart in the Metaverse and changing how he’d thought in real life as well. 

Lee turned himself in at the police station the next day. His confession sent the media into a flurry of confusion. _Who were the phantom thieves and how had they orchestrated this takedown?_ Namjoon himself had enjoyed reading some of the more outlandish theories online, some of them even wilder than the truth.

In any case, with the blackmail Lee had on Hosook no longer being a problem, she’d been freed. Hosook shook off the principal’s more tenuous blackmail as well, telling him politely that she thought it was best if he didn’t write her a sports recommendation after all. Spying and lurking around was taking too much time from her studies and tennis, so if he wanted more information on his students he could do the skulking himself. By the next day, Jungkook and Hosook had been waiting as usual at the Phantom Thieves’ meet-up spot after school.

Namjoon, Jimin, Taehyung and Mon had easily accepted them into the fold, with Jimin gushing about how glad she was to no longer be the only girl of the group. Yoongi was the only team member who’d taken some more convincing. 

“Lee’s palace has been destroyed. What are the two of you still here for? Who says we’re looking for new recruits?” he’d said gruffly, but two sincere apologies and puppy eyes from Jungkook later, he’d caved.

Jungkook and Hosook stayed, two new friends added to the group of thieves, and they’d fit in surprisingly easily.

On the more practical side, Namjoon was thankful they had two more fighters. The duo’s psionic and nuclear type abilities had meshed well with their mix of elemental powers, and that greatly reduced the amount of persona-switching Namjoon had to do mid-battle. They’d been able to go on longer jaunts into Mementos recently, and reach deeper levels with ease. Two days ago they’d hit another barrier—

“Hell-o! Earth to Namjoon!”

Namjoon blinks at the petite hand waving in front of his face, realizing it’s Jimin’s. 

“Huh?”

“It’s dinnertime. We’re gonna head out,” says Jimin.

She smiles and links arms with Taehyung. Namjoon’s still surprised they went from being at each other’s throats to self-described soulmates ( _but ew, Namjoon, we’re not dating!_ ) but he’s never seen them happier. Taehyung had gotten much less tongue-tied around all of them and once Jimin had realised he had never been making fun of her, they’d gotten along swimmingly.

“Tae, did you want to stay for dinner?” offers Namjoon. “Minseok said he wouldn’t mind.”

The gruff coffee shop owner talked a big deal about taking in strays, but with Namjoon and Mon living in the attic and now Taehyung dropping in for meals, anyone could see he was a softie at heart.

Tae grins, a smile lighting up his whole face. “Thanks but no thanks! We’re having tonkatsu at Jimin’s place tonight!”

In the last couple of months there’d been an unspoken agreement between Yoongi, Namjoon and Jimin to make sure Taehyung was getting enough to eat. After his legal guardian had been jailed for fraud, Taehyung’s been living entirely off his savings and art commission fees. They’d realized he was skipping meals when he casted one too many ice spells in the Metaverse and keeled over mid-battle. Since then, they’d kept up a rotating schedule, but Jimin’s parents in particular had taken a shine to their daughter’s new best friend and were glad to have Taehyung over for dinner almost every night. 

“Thanks again for letting us host the study group at your place, Namjoon!” Jimin says to him, ever the mannered one. “ _Ciao!_ ” 

“Why would you say that, Jimin,” groans Jungkook, who’s stuffing the books back into his bag, “Don’t make me think about English right now! We’ve done enough studying! My head’s gonna burst!”

Hosook, also packing her stuff, laughs. “Kook, it was Spanish!”

“Whatever! Let’s get going, my brother’s going to end me if I’m not home before dinner.”

People are beginning to shuffle out the door when Namjoon realizes Yoongi’s still seated. He hasn’t moved an inch, still propped up in the corner of the booth with eyes closed and a half-formed pout on his face. He’s...fast asleep?

“Guys? I think Yoongi’s sleeping...” says Namjoon.

 _Of course he is_ , yips Mon, _he’s been sleeping since he put on those headphones_.

“You didn’t notice?” laughs Jimin.

“That’s why we stopped talking, we didn’t want to wake him up,” explains Hosook gently. “He seemed really tired.”

As of late, Yoongi looks like he hasn’t been sleeping. He’s dodged Taehyung’s questions about it and brushed off Jimin’s teasing about his dark eye circles, but Namjoon sees him fall asleep so often in class that he’s beginning to worry there’s something wrong.

(There’s also the matter of what he _thought_ he saw in Lee’s palace, but—)

Jimin and Taehyung exchange a glance with each other.

“Joonie-hyung, why don’t you stay with him? It’s a Saturday, and I can text his mom to let her know he’s staying over for dinner,” suggests Taehyung.

“You could also ask him what he’s up to, since he won’t tell the rest of us,” says Jimin bluntly. “We’ve all been taking it easy with training since Lee’s palace but Yoongi looks like he’s still attending Jung-seonsaengnim’s basketball practice sessions.”

Namjoon winces. “Got it. I’ll see if I can find out what’s up.”

Jimin nods and Taehyung’s shoulders relax as soon as Namjoon agrees. 

It’s still a foreign kind of feeling, being the leader of their little band of thieves. He’s not the oldest, nor the most experienced, but nobody else had even hesitated at the decision. Even now, Namjoon’s humbled by how much trust they have in him to handle things. 

Jimin bends down to smooch Mon goodbye, and Namjoon waves as his friends file out the door. The sun hangs low in the sky and casts a warm golden glow on his friends, the buildings, the street, this moment in time. Suddenly Namjoon can’t remember if he’s ever felt this content before in his life. Funny how his life got turned upside-down in a matter of months, from promising prodigy to social pariah to vigilante hero. 

He’s still struggling over the big questions, like who he is and why he’s been given these powers, but surrounded by his friends none of that seems as daunting as it used to be.

“See you tomorrow!”

Though it’s cooler now in late afternoon, the blast of air from outside is still uncomfortably warm. Namjoon feels the hairs on his back standing up, so he shuts the door quickly after his friends disappear around the corner.

Back inside, the sun has dropped to an angle where it peeks under the window awning and paints the whole booth in light. The darker brown of the wooden bench, the mustard yellow of Yoongi’s t-shirt and the grey of his hoodie, the pale of his skin and the even paler shock of white-blond hair, all of it gets dyed in gold. It’s more beautiful than anything this ordinary has the right of being.

Namjoon’s staring, but Yoongi’s asleep and Mon’s wandered off somewhere, so what does it matter if he looks? Yoongi’s just sitting there. 

It’s not illegal to look at your friends sometimes. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

It doesn’t matter.

_(It does matter, but Namjoon’s always been good at pretending otherwise.)_

Yoongi has the sun caught in his eyelashes, in the frayed tips of his hair. If it weren’t for the slow rise and fall of his chest, he’d be like one of Taehyung’s colour studies, figure in oils splashed across canvas.

Namjoon observes him quietly until the twitching of his eyelids signals that Yoongi’s on his way to waking up, and then he quickly pulls the English textbook closer to him and pretends to be reading.

Yoongi breathes in sharply, then exhales. Out of the corner of Namjoon’s eye, he watches as Yoongi blinks his eyes open and looks around, seemingly startled that everyone else has left.

“Joon-ah? Where’s everyone?” asks Yoongi, voice a bit scratchy from just waking up.

He pulls the headphones off his head and Namjoon lets himself look up.

“Ah, they’ve already went home. It’s kind of late.”

Yoongi hums. His irises are a lighter caramel in the direct sunlight, unlike the normal brown. He’s still slumped against the wall, posture slack. Unguarded. He doesn’t make any move to get up, but instead nods at Namjoon’s textbook. 

“Still going hard?”

“Ah...yeah. Got distracted earlier so I’m still not done with the review questions.”

Yoongi snorts. 

“Like you actually need to do them,” he teases. “You could’ve spent today sleeping instead and still place in the top ten. Can’t believe I used to think you were a delinquent and not a huge nerd.”

Back when they’d first met, the first few weeks, Yoongi hadn’t mentioned the rumours swirling around him at all, seemingly taking it for granted that Namjoon was just like him. Yoongi would casually suggest they skip class and Namjoon, desperate not to lose the only person who wasn’t afraid to talk to him, would agree without a second thought. Byungin Academy’s main building rooftop is off-limits to students, but it was surprisingly easy for them to pick the lock and sneak in. They would spend hours lying on the rooftop and listening to music, one pair of earphones split between the two of them.

Namjoon’s “lie” was only exposed when Yoongi nonchalantly offered him a smoke one day. Namjoon managed not to cough, but he got violently sick after puffing through an entire cigarette and was forced to admit to Yoongi that it was his first time smoking. 

The whole story came out, after that. Yoongi listened quietly and got angry on his behalf at all the right parts, and by the end of it Namjoon felt lighter than he had in months.

_“So. You were a top student before Byungin, huh?” mused Yoongi._

_Namjoon nodded._

_“That makes sense. I wondered how you got the transfer, considering you’re not on a sports scholarship and you don’t seem like the type where your parents bribed the school,” continued Yoongi. “Do you actually like class?”_

_“Well...Not all the time...” Namjoon had hesitated then. “It can be pretty boring.”_

But his split-second hesitation had been enough. From then on Yoongi attended class with him, and only dragged him to the rooftop after it ended.

It’s disorienting to think about, the period of time right after Namjoon had been framed for assault and had to transfer schools. Nothing about him outwardly had changed, but it was like overnight he’d become a different person to everyone else. Teachers who used to praise his compositions would pass him over or look at him with vaguely disapproving judgement. People whom he thought were his friends stopped calling out to him or talking to him at all.

Namjoon didn’t know who he was anymore, when you stripped away his accomplishments and wrapped him in lies and nobody, not even his parents, believed him. 

And then there’d been Yoongi. The first to believe he was telling the truth. And then, Jimin, and Taehyung, and now Jungkook and Hosook, supporting him but never telling him who he should be. That was still a question addressed to Namjoon himself.

And even now he’s still trying to answer it. Identity built upon how other people perceive you is so fragile; for something that will last, you need to dig deep and put the foundations in yourself.

Anyway, that's far enough for today. Namjoon mentally pulls himself back.

Yoongi’s staring at his notebook, poised for writing, but equally lost in thought. The pen held in his hand casts a shadow over the blank page.

He looks tired. Weary. A bend to the spine that’s more than just his usually bad posture. 

Namjoon feels a prickle of unease. They’d just changed Lee’s heart last week and Yoongi had celebrated with the rest of them, but now he looks defeated and Namjoon doesn’t know why.

( _The only thing that stands out was the figure he saw Yoongi talking to in Lee’s palace, but that was probably just a shadow. Never mind that it looked nothing like the usual ones._ )

“If you—If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always here to listen,” says Namjoon, then immediately cringes at how cheesy he sounds.

Yoongi chuckles.

“Ah, Joonie, don’t worry about it,” he says, and then they fall back into silence again.

Namjoon can’t let it end here, not when everyone’s depending on him to figure out what’s going on with Yoongi.

“I’m serious,” he says firmly. “And I can’t help it, I _am_ worried. You know you can tell me whatever it is. We’re friends, right?”

It’s a guilt trip, and Yoongi knows it too, judging from the tight-lipped look he cuts Namjoon. But it works. Yoongi fiddles with his pen, spinning it around and around as he thinks.

“It’s nothing. I just haven’t been sleeping well,” says Yoongi slowly. “Kinda worried. I guess.”

“About what?”

“Are you ever—” Yoongi hesitates. “I dunno. Worried? About the whole Phantom Thieves thing?”

“I’m guessing you mean other than the battles.”

“Yeah. Of course it’s terrifying when we’re about to get our heads smashed in by monsters, but do you ever worry about if we’re doing the right thing? If we’re the right people?”

 _Swish swish swish_. The pen goes around and around in more agitated circles and the shadows cast on the notebook dance along frantically.

“Or even if we _are_ the right people,” continues Yoongi, more frantically, “How long do we have until we mess up and it all falls apart? We were on the news last week, Namjoon. There’s only so long before there’s an organized effort to figure out how we’re doing it and to stop us. I’m just worried for when it all catches up.”

You can run and run and never outrun your shadow. Right now they’re flying high, fresh off the success of their third heist and feeling like all the evils in the world are a challenge they can overcome. And maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, but they’d be damned if they’re not excited to try.

Well, Namjoon thought they were all excited, but Yoongi who was once the driving force of their slog through Jung’s castle is now the hesitant one. 

Namjoon knows what Yoongi’s thinking of.

After Lee had turned himself in to the police, the press had exploded in a flurry of reporting and speculation. After all, it’s not every day that a crime boss does a full one-eighty and confesses to helping orchestrate prostiution rings. 

There was interviews with former employees, victims of the sex-trafficking ring, psychologists, police consultants; people citing temporary insanity, blackmail, financial reasons, an act of God, anything at all to explain the sudden confession from someone who had never expressed remorse before last week.

And on channel five, at eight o’clock sharp last Tuesday evening, there had been the first mention of the Phantom Thieves on television. They had already reached slight notoriety online with their previous heists but this was another level entirely; it catapulted them into public consciousness.

Here was Jin, South Korea’s detective idol sweetheart, sitting primly in a faux leather armchair and talking to the show host about the new threat these so-called “Phantom Thieves” posed to society.

“The problem,” Jin had said, speaking directly towards the camera, “is that we have no idea how they operate. And that is a serious issue.”

An image of the black-and-red Phantom Thieves logo whipped up by Taehyung flashed across the screen. It’s a slick top-hat and mask combo that they’d switched to using on their website and calling cards in place of Yoongi’s original doodle.

“Mysterious techniques or not,” asked the talk show host, “Isn’t it good that they’ve been exposing criminals? Street polls are showing that people, young adults in particular, are now more interested in the Phantom Thieves than they are in the upcoming municipal elections. Dissatisfaction with the government has been steadily rising for years, no thanks to the recent scandals, and many people seem ready for systemic change. Netizens are already hailing the Phantom Thieves as the heroes of the common people, exposing crimes that would have gone uncovered or unpunished forever without their intervention.”

It’s a subtle jab at the Seoul police department. Rumor has it that they had known about Lee’s illicit activities for ages but had not acted. The talk show host is clearly out for blood tonight. Namjoon thinks he’s overestimating the Phantom Thieves’ current popularity in an attempt to get more views, and for some reason Jin is playing along.

“I won’t deny that so far they’ve done Seoul a service,” says Jin evenly. “But without knowing their methods and how they’re getting people to confess, how can we be sure the confessions are true?”

“Are you saying that Lee might be innocent? And the scamming artist, Kim Dahee? And what of that unnamed high school basketball instructor?” asks the host eagerly.

“No, no. We can’t determine that before the trials, but it’s true that since each of them confessed, we’ve been getting a lot of self-reported victims and evidence. I am not talking about the people whose hearts they’ve ‘stolen’ so far.” Jin makes air quotes with his gloved fingers and gives a wry smile. “I was talking about cases in the future.”

“Please, explain.”

“Think of it this way. Generally, in the case of finding a culprit for a crime, you’d think that witnesses would be cooperative and that anyone distorting the truth is somehow complicit in the crime. But in reality, there’s a lot of reasons why someone who’s lying under oath could be not guilty. It’s dangerous to assume so in absence of evidence just because they are lying.”

The host nods and Jin continues.

“There are times when we get lie-detector results that we want to use in court as evidence, but we can’t, because the tests we administer are unreliable by nature. In the same vein, these mysterious change-of-heart confessions we’re seeing from the Phantom Thieves' targets could also be unreliable. If we don’t understand how they’re getting them, it could also be vulnerable to exploitation.”

“So, you’re saying that the confessions could be faked.”

“Potentially. _I_ can’t say, and _you_ can’t say either unless you’re secretly a Phantom Thief,” laughs Jin, “We just don’t know, and that is the problem.”

A smattering of laughter from the audience. Jin flashes his patented smile at the cameras as the talk show host wraps up and they cut to commercials. 

Less than an hour later the top searched result about the Phantom Thieves is the Jin interview and Beomgyu texts Namjoon in a panic because the Phansite’s been overloaded with traffic. Most of the visits are from Jin’s fans, poking around to see what their idol had been talking about and spamming the message boards with pictures of Jin. But a fair number had been from the general public as well.

At the time, Yoongi had scoffed at it and said it was their fifteen minutes of fame thanks to a pretty-boy detective and his teenaged fans, but the buzz only got bigger and now Yoongi seems to have grown worried about it.

The conversation has died out in the time that Namjoon’s been thinking of an answer and now Yoongi’s picking at his cuticles, staring a million miles away out the window. The sun’s dipped below the horizon and without its glow the whole room seems dimmer, more washed-out.

“Yoongi?” tries Namjoon. “I’m not afraid.”

Yoongi looks at him. In the afterglow of sunset his eyes have gone back to dark brown, maybe even closer to black. Namjoon can’t read the emotion in Yoongi’s sunspot eyes, but he continues anyway.

“I think I’d be scared if I was alone, and more worried that I’m making a mistake. But I’m not scared when I’m with everyone else. We’ve already made it through so much together and somehow it feels like stopping now, when we’re finally starting to get somewhere, is worse than trying and failing.”

Yoongi listens. Waiting.

“I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing. I think it’s impossible to say we won’t hurt anyone by what we do in the Metaverse. We don’t know if it’s right to change people’s wills and make them believe something different and maybe what we’ve done so far is unfair to the people whose hearts we’ve stolen. But on the other hand, we’ve definitely had a positive impact. All your old teammates who don’t have to suffer through abusive practice sessions anymore, the ex-students who’ve been exploited for their art, and everyone who’s been blackmailed and exploited by Lee’s company. Plus there’s our friends, who know what we’ve done and are choosing to join us because they believe it’s right. I think as long as we remember we’re doing it for them and for other people we won’t go wrong, so you shouldn’t worry.”

Namjoon really, truly believes in what he’s saying and he hopes Yoongi can too.

“Wow. You’re really something, Leader,” says Yoongi softly.

Something about it sounds off but at that moment the doorbell jingles and Minseok is pushing in, with shopping bags in hand and Mon excitedly trailing at his feet.

Namjoon jumps up to help his landlord get the groceries into the fridge, and Minseok takes one look at Yoongi trying to pack his stuff up and tells him to cut it out and just have dinner with them. Mon props his paws up on Yoongi’s shin and begs for scraps, managing to get even more from Yoongi than they normally get from Minseok, and Namjoon soaks up the domesticity and forgets most of what they talked about earlier that night.

Months later, when it’s all fallen apart, Namjoon tries to think back to this day. He can only remember the beauty of the sun-drenched cafe booth, the unreadable look Yoongi’s sunspot eyes, and a vague feeling of having chosen the wrong thing to say.

**Author's Note:**

> Maddy and I actually have a lot of ideas about this AU :) If you wanna chat please do!
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/sunpatchy) | [cc ](https://curiouscat.qa/patchyderms)


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